So what about driving? How important is it to dating/relationships/intimacy? Let’s look at this phenomenon one by one:

Dating: When you’re dating, it’s important to have a car, especially if you’re a guy. Not necessarily because your date might demand it—though she might secretly be thinking, “What a putz, he doesn’t even have a car”, if you don’t—but because it adds to the dude’s confidence. Many a time I’ve been paralyzed about going on a date with someone that involved public transportation. Nothing kills romance more than riding a bus full of crackheads and juvenile delinquents, which are the two demographics with which public transit seems most suited.

It’s also important to drive fairly well. Like it or not, your date is judging you on your driving skills, and whether or not you’ve just backed into that nice BMW with your piece-of-crap Ford Escort. Parallel parking? You do this right, and she’s 95 % in the bag. Swearing at motorists? You’re back at square one, or worse.

Don’t drive drunk! Not for any namby-pamby reasons like you might hit someone, but because it’s just bad form. Although there are always those girls whom you’ve just met at a rocker bar who might be excited by the prospect of the “bad boy” who gets behind the wheel of his SUV and plows home after eight pitchers of draft, most women will be turned off at the prospect. Also, you might get pulled over, and that’s just not sexy. Unless you manage to talk your way out of it, or the cop recognizes you from the TV show you were in. Women, also, shouldn’t drive drunk, unless they’re mothers.

Remember, driving during the dating stage is one way of impressing your prospective mate, and one that doesn’t involve cash (after the initial investment, natch), wit or brawn.

Relationships: Driving, like money, sooner or later becomes a contentious issue. She doesn’t like the way you speed up at yellow lights, say, or he doesn’t like that, to see where you’re going, you have to lean so far over the steering wheel your nose is touching the front windshield. All this stuff seemed cute at first, but six months in you’re thinking, it’s time to get a bike.

Intimate: Well, outside of the fact that just having a car can be an aphrodisiac in the right circumstance, never mind something that’s actually kind of sexy (i.e. not a Ford Escort), the automobile offers plenty of opportunity go get frisky with one another. Our parents knew this, and their parents, and Meat Loaf sure as heck knew it. Now, of course, you can rent giant stretch SUVs that look like Tommy Lee’s kitchen, complete with with hot tubs and stripper polls. That takes some of the fun and innocence of parking at a Lover’s Lane-type area, but it’s nice to know that no one in that staggering party of stagettees is doing the driving.